I Remember Greene Street

a grain
of sand
through
glass
nick drake
sings
and hours
and chocolate
and strawberry
oceans wash
past.

the last
sunlapped petal
drapes intself
against fractal
abstract skies
waves lapse
as society castes
aside clawed lions
in english
countryside
past times.

-

nobody sings
about jesus
being alone
no one ever
sings
about being stoned
on the phone
the calendar
keeps track of
dope and mechanical
memories
made of soap
no body loves you
no body sees
no one needs a reason
but your corruption
is just too extreme
in agony
I can see
what's up your sleeve
the dreams that
leak like water
from the bottom
of a sack.

I said I loved you
and it was true
only one man knows better
the man in the moon
we talk for hours babe
I meant no harm
Harms not very good.
nobody loves you like
me and the dogs.
No one sees your
soul in repose
and slowly
as the hours pour
like dry martinis
in spectral shakers
heading for the sea
no one will remember
how many you poured
for me

I'm Digging your scene - The Blow Monkeys

Doctor Robert...nothing has changed.

In 1986 I was 14 years old and this track was a hit on the radio, on MTV and elsewhere. It was one of the first songs to be very specifically about the AIDS crisis (they put your in a hole to fill in/but I prefer you to be seen). I should have been dancing and discovering the joys of being a teenager. Instead I was learning that being gay meant I was going to die of AIDS and all around me people I loved or knew of were already becoming sick or had actually died. People driving by in trucks screamed "Fag!!" at me on the way to school. Could they tell I was gay-that in my heart I fell in love with men? What was so wrong with me that they couldn't see the love in my heart? That I was just like them?

I am 38 this year. That was almost 25 years ago now. Sometimes it feels like the world is still so full of hatred I don't know how I even go on, and is the world even worth saving anymore? I don't know what the hell I am doing sometimes...its like treading water but dying of thirst.

Brain please go to sleep - stop the world, I want to get off.